Rafah Crossing Reopens, Just Five Wounded Gazans Allowed Out – The Tuesday AM Quickie 2/3/26

It was freezing when I went to the nurses’ picket yesterday, but spirits were high, music was loud, and they are going to win. Here’s my story about their historic strike and here’s their picket schedule for the week. If you’re in NYC, join the line! You’ll get your steps in, make new friends, and let the bosses know what’s up. – Whitney

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2/3: Today’s guest is Jamie Holmes, writer and author of The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, The Indigenous Rebel, and America's Forgotten War.

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Today you’ll read about the Rafah crossing opening for the first time in two years, the bomb threats against Liam Conejo Ramos’ school district, and the jury trial Meta is facing for allegedly enabling child trafficking.

THE BIG NEWS

Rafah Crossing Reopens, Just Five Injured Palestinians Allowed to Leave Gaza

The Israeli government reopened the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza yesterday but placed such heavy restrictions on who could come and go that just five of the thousands of Palestinians in need of medical care abroad were allowed to leave, Al Jazeera and the Washington Post reported. Prior plans with the World Health Organization had arranged for the departure of 50 patients daily. 

Rafah is the only way out of Gaza by land that doesn’t require going through Israel; it has been closed for the two years of Israel’s ongoing genocide, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians. Reopening the crossing is a “necessary step, but it is far too long overdue,” said Fikr Shalltoot, the Gaza director at the UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. 

“Lives were undoubtedly lost because this crossing remained closed for so long,” she said in a statement. “Every day of delay meant children dying of hypothermia because of a lack of adequate shelter, patients denied lifesaving treatment and hospitals pushed closer to collapse.”